Mental
by Jinx Rose
Summary: Seline finds herself with the ability to see when, and how someone will die. With the threat of death looming closer day by day as she unknowingly befriends the Cullen Coven, and the Volturi's involvement, she finds her mate.
1. Chapter 1

It started when I was a little girl. At first, glimpses, flashes, but as I grew older, it grew stronger. By four years old I could see the numbers floating above people heads. It didn't mean anything to me, not at first. At age six I could see how the people would die, the numbers grew. First the date they died, then how much time they had left in chronological order, years, months, days, hours, and minutes. At age seven, I could hardly look at someone without seeing their deaths years down the road. I would try to tell my parents, but they never listened.

Well, they listened after I told the teacher that she would die because a bus would hit her walking home from school. She laughed it off, calling it an overactive imagination. Her obituary came over the television only hours later when I got home, her young smiling face forever memorialized in pictures. They say the bus hit her at such speed that she instantly died. I knew she died slowly, her wounds knocking her near death, heart barely beating, not registering to people taking pulse. Her breathing was shallow, not seen by the naked eye. She was laid under the plastic tarp they used to cover bodies in the street to hide them from public view where she suffocated to death, some near half an hour later.

My parents took notice of me after that. Kept me away from other children, I was taught not to look at people, not to speak, to do what I was told and not to disobey. At nine, they sent me off into the insane asylum, or mental institution as they now call it, one hundred and twenty miles upstate in a secluded area. I was the youngest person there by forty five years. I was kept in a white room, given white clothing, and was specially tutored there, carefully monitored. At ten, my powers took a leap forward, I could now see the deaths and dates of names on paper, or in books. In photographs or just by the voices on the radio.

I learned quickly not to acknowledge any of it. I was kept under mild sedation most of the time, locking me within my own thoughts, going through the motions of life, but never truly living. I did my work, I ate my dinner without complaints, and I slept. I kept away from the other people here, I didn't talk, I didn't fuss, I took my medication without complaint, and I visited the shrink six times a week. I didn't say anything, and he didn't ask questions, just watched and observed me. I wasn't allowed to play with toys, they were a security hazard or something, but I made do with what I had. I grew up quickly, advanced most of my tutoring in the first several years in the institute, they said I was the easiest patient to deal with, and they brought in specialized people to teach me after a while. They were called professors. Specialized people from colleges in the state. All of them were interested in the progress I was making, and many wanted me to be in studies involving the mentally unstable people.

I wasn't mentally unstable. I knew what I had was different, but I wasn't wrong in the mind. I knew that, and my doctors were slowly beginning to realize that as well. All of the medication they had put me on didn't work, even after changing the dosages. I was a medical mystery. Or so they say. All I knew was that I felt like I would live the rest of my days here under careful observation for something I couldn't control, but also something I didn't talk about.

I turned seventeen the week before they told me I was going to be released back to my parents. I had spent eight years in those white walls, everything carefully scheduled out, and being released into a world of color, of choice, frightened me. I lashed out that first day, crying hysterically until they sedated me. I could see the looks of pity, and sorrow upon the nurse's faces as I was being escorted back to my room, numb from the injection one of the doctors had put into my arm. They knew. They knew why I acted this way, what possessed me to lash out. Fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of my parents, of things out of my control. I spent that night in an isolation hold. In the morning I was released for breakfast, I took my medication, I ate silently, and my plastic utensils did not make noise on the white plastic tray. I was escorted to the showers, where I showered quickly, dressing myself and drying my hair with a towel. I spent the rest of my day in my room.

I had little that actually belonged to me. Several books, three sets of identical white clothing, and a pair of white sneakers that were gently worn in. The day I was sentenced to leave my white haven and brave the harsh colorful world outside it had rained. Hard. The roads were slick with mud, the hard packed dirt had found itself caked in a thick layer on the black rental car that was standing in idle right outside the front of the building. My clothing and only four of my books were in a small white backpack, everything would be washed, cleaned, and re purposed to someone else, my room currently being sterilized by a janitor working too hard for the meager salary he earned. He always smelt of lemon citrus and peppermint gum. His aging face scrunched into a frown as he often scrubbed a spot on the floor over and over again to get the scuff mark off the floor someone had left while walking the hallways going to or from somewhere.


	2. Chapter 2

I got in the back of the car, my small backpack shoved into the back of the trunk, the man heavily shutting it shook the car, and then closed my door after making sure I was buckled. The rental car smelt of stale cigarette smoke, and the pine tree car freshener hanging from the rear view mirror. The heavyset man lugged himself into the car, it lowering under his weight, and I'm pretty sure his stomach touched the fake leather steering wheel. The car started with a groan, he slipped his seatbelt over his massive belly before turning on the heat, blowing his scent of body odor and cheap cologne into the back of the car. He lurched the car into motion, and I looked out the window. The doctor, and the head nurse stood by the front entrance of the institute, waving goodbye at me in their white uniforms. They would get a new patient soon, I was sure of it.

We hit a pot hole in the muddy dirt road about halfway off of the property, and he grunted as the steering wheel jabbed him, the car rocking momentarily from the wheel digging itself into the hole, and then rolling back out. The grip on the steering wheel tightened, the large meaty hands of the driver clad in fake leather driving gloves. The suit he wore was too small, showing half of his forearms, and nearly ripping at the seams at the shoulders and armpit. The hat he wore was also too small, revealing the rolled expanse of his neck, even from my view in the back seat, I could see the hat was trying to eat at his nearly bald head, leaving angry red lines from where he had adjusted it so many times.

Other than for his breathing, and the heater going, the car ride was silent. So silent that you could hear the sounds of the road underneath us as we moved off the privately owned institute dirt road and onto state highway. The fat nearly bald man grumbled to himself, low enough I couldn't tell what he was saying, but loud enough to know he was not happy for whatever reason. I resumed looking out the window. Trees and shrubbery lined both sides of the highway, the overcast overhead gave the area a nice cool feel, and made the road seem calm. There were no cars on the road, but that was to be expected, nobody came down this highway any more, much better roads had been created that got people where they wanted to go faster, this was now the scenic route. The trees passed by us, or rather, we them, on our journey back to civilization. Had my parents changed? I know I have. Did they still live in the same house? Would I go to high school or continued to be tutored from home? I hope they didn't expect me to talk, I really didn't do much of that.

I remembered the little two room one bathroom house we lived in before they sent me away. The aging yellow bricks stood on the outside, the bright red walls on the inside, someone previous to us used a horrible color of paint, and the only way the owner could change the color was paint it red, or black. Obviously, black was a poor choice, but this color of red was like someone had dripped the paint brush in blood and went to work. It had aged in the thirty years it had originally been painted, and the bright red had faded to a rusty orange brown, peeling in the corners, and years of doors slamming open left little dents and chips by the doorknobs, revealing the ugly slime green underneath. Our living room was small, barely fitting a love seat and a reading chair in the corner.

The backyard was a different story. Bright green and lush, it spanned more area then the floor of the whole house. White fencing separated our yard from the plush yards of our neighbors. I was the only kid on the block, but I didn't mind. That meant I could play in the backyard all to myself, enjoying the peace. It also meant that my parents didn't have to worry about birthday parties wrecking the lawn with their prying little fingers and needle like little feet as children ran around.

We didn't have much of a front yard, more like a two feet wide strip of dried and brown grass separating our house from the sidewalk. Most houses looked horrible in the front, mainly because the fumes of the cars killed off whatever shrubbery that could have grown, but the backyards were untouched, leaving wide expanse of green. Our mailbox had been crudely painted a black, showing the red flecks of paint underneath, our surname clumsily scrawled on the side of the box with white paint, almost unreadable. Our landlord had the worst handwriting, he should have been a doctor instead.

Our neighbor to our right had almost the same house, only instead of yellow paint it was blue. She was a kind old lady, her long gray hair often tied back into a ponytail, and then braided. A kind wrinkled face harbored wise gray eyes and a smile that stood the test of time. She often invited me over for tea and cookies, and told me stories of her childhood being raised on the farm before moving out into the big city. She would talk for hours and hours, sitting on the front porch, watching the cars drive by, and every now and then she would say something that would make me laugh. I don't remember much of what she said, but she was a pleasant old lady to talk to. And then she got sick. I was young at the time, before the numbers started to show what they meant, and I worried for the old lady. Her grandchildren had picked her up at her house a week later, and she never returned.

A cranky balding man had taken her place a month later. He was grouchy, never clean shaven, and reeked of the cigars that never left his chapped lips. He would yell at anybody who came near, and the dog he kept chained in the backyard would try to escape and attack people. I remember seeing flashing lights of police cars multiple times a week before I was sent away. That man stayed in that house for years, letting it get into decrepit condition.

Our left neighbors were a newly married couple. They were always smiling and hugging, cuddling one another. They had a tire swing on their tree in the backyard, and would often let me play on it after daycare. I never thought anything of them, except that he was put on trial for murder after his wife disappeared one day. They never found the body, but I know he did it. He was released because lack of evidence, and I never looked or talked to him again. He still lives there the last time I checked, but that was years ago.

These fossilized memories of mine through the hazy eyes of a child remind me that I was once part of society too. That I had once knew how to behave in society, in their world. I'm not sure I know how to do that anymore. Times have changed, I have changed. I'm no longer that easy going little girl, I was the sedated, locked away version of her. It made me realize I was wholly dependent on the institution, and I had read somewhere that it wasn't a good thing, but I don't really bring myself to care.

Slowly the trees and shrubbery near the highway faded out, revealing flat landscape. When I made this journey last, I had been crying, and it was dark. Two white coated men had taken me, saying that they would make me better. I didn't understand it at the time, I thrashed against their holds until they tranquilized me, shoving me into the back of a mesh windowed car. I was awake enough to cry, but not much else. They sat in the front, listening to music on the radio and making small talk to pass the time away. When I first arrived at the institute I had been wearing my pajamas, simple black with white trim, no shoes. My breast pocket had a small teddy bear stitched into it. These clothes were the first to go. I was given white clothing, and sent off to a white room. I hadn't slept that first night, too afraid of the new surroundings to even close my eyes for longer than a couple of seconds.

I watched the passing landscape with rapt attention. This was new to me.

"Don't press your hand to the glass, I just cleaned that." The fat man told me gruffly, and I looked over at him.

I hadn't realized that I had touched the glass with my hand. I removed it, watching the heat marks from my hand slowly dissipate from the window. He went on muttering about fingerprints and greasy little children. I was not a child, I was not greasy, not like the man driving the car. He pulled over later into an old run down gas station, and shut off the car.

"Stay here, you got that, you little ingrate?" he rhetorically said, but I nodded anyways.

He got out, locked the car, and went inside. He came out minutes later with a dozen donuts and a jerky stick hanging between his short little spaced out teeth. He unlocked the car, managed to fit himself inside, and closed the door behind him. He set the donuts on the seat next to him, and the crinkle of the jerky stick being unwrapped caught my attention. It smelt of over processed shoe leather and looked greasy enough to come straight of a fryer without being cleaned off or drained. I wrinkled my nose as I watched him almost inhale it, barely stopping to chew, instead ripping of large chunks and swallowing, even the noises he made disgusted me. He was starting to remind me more and more of a pig, and less and less of a human.

He was going to die in three years, four months, nine days, six hours and twenty three minutes of a heart attack due to all of the fast food he ate. The over processed meals on a little TV tray while he sat reclined in his chair at home in front of the television is what is going to stop him from being able to call the police. It was going to get caught on the chair, and he wouldn't be able to move it, instead it locking into place against the open metal springs of the aged brown recliner. He was only going to be found when he became a funny smell a few weeks later by an angry neighbor from across the hall in the apartment complex he lived in.

Soon enough, he finished his meal, tugged on the leather driving gloves, and started the car. It took two tries to start, him cursing all the way, stomping on the gas. The car screeched slightly as he stepped on the gas to get onto the highway, the car jolting near painfully to the right as the right hind tire hit gravel of the shoulder. He cursed again, jerking the wheel the other direction, and then over correcting to stay in the lane. Not that it mattered, the highway was deserted like I had said before. The rest of the trip went smoothly, other than the fact the car would serve a little when the driver would lean over to grab another doughnut. I never saw the appeal of those, the institute only fed healthy non-sugar foods.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Big thank you to Chelsea who reviewed, this chapter is dedicated to you as a thank you. Despite the many authors on this site that try to remind readers that reviews on their works make the chapters appear faster, it is sadly overlooked and forgotten. So I am going to say this as well, more reviews, the faster I update.**_

We entered the suburbs of the city, and we began to pass the familiar roads long had I thought forgotten in my memory. I think it was around two in the afternoon, but I didn't see anybody in the streets. We stopped in front of the house I remembered, and the driver shut the car off. He got out, opened my car door, and went to take my back pack out of the trunk. Pressing the white back pack strap into my hand firmly before letting go, he walked up the three steps to the front door, and knocked with the big ham fist that seemed to emerge from the fat of his arms not covered up by the ridiculously badly tailored suit he wore. The door slowly swung open, revealing a girl several years younger than me. Bleached blond hair framed a fake spray tan with blue eyes. It was her brown eye brows that gave away her natural hair color. She popped her gum, the pink slowly being blown past her lips, popping against her lip glossed lips before a pink tongue flickered out and brought it back into her mouth to be chewed and popped again.

"Mom! Someone's at the door!" she called behind her, eyeing me up and down, taking in my white shirt and white pants, my white shoes. She herself wore a pair of black heels, dark was jeans, and a red blouse and several wrist bands. An aged version of what I last remembered as my mother came to the door, shooing away the younger teenager.

"You're early! I wasn't expecting you so soon. Come in, come in. make yourselves at home." She smiled, more wrinkles around her blue eyes, but still had an air of youthfulness.

I could see that she was straining herself to be so polite, it was like a mask, that once the fat driver left, would fall and crumple.

"Veronica! Get in here!" she hollered, the mask had slipped, and her once pleasant voice turned cold and harsh, echoing into the small house.

I couldn't help but swallow, nearly pressing my back into the closed front door. I would really like my small room in the institute back now, whatever God is listening. A teenage huff could be heard, and the creaking of a piece of furniture before the door that went to my old room was opened, and Veronica came out. Name to face, I could tell that the young teen already hated me.

"This is your younger sister, we adopted her three years after-"she cut off, looking at me wearily for a moment, fixing what she was going to say. "Well, you know. Your father isn't home yet. You'll be sharing a room with Veronica. She moved her things out of a drawer and a section of the closet for your things." She eyed my backpack.

The driver was nervous, he had every right to be. But he wasn't going to stay here, I was. I was going to essentially live with strangers. He could leave, forget this place, and never come back. It was a prison sentence for me. Whatever deity that would like to spare me, take pity on me, do so now. Let me go back to the institute. Maybe if I pretend to go crazy, they'll send me back. Probably not, but it was worth a try.

"Is that all you have?" Veronica sneered, looking at my pathetic backpack, and then up at me.

I nodded softly, and she cackled, slamming the bedroom door shut and music blared from the room. If it could even be classified by music. This small little house did not feel like home, did not radiate comfort like it had in my memories.

"I, uh, really must get going ma'am." He drawled, wringing his hat in his hands. When had he taken it off? It had slipped my attention obviously. My mother nodded, and he nearly pushed me over to open the door, slamming it behind him. I heard the car start, and then the peeling of tires as he sped away. I swallowed again, watching my mother as if she was a dangerous predator, and I the prey. She didn't move at the moment, didn't blink. She seemed about as shocked as I was. I highly doubt it, though.

"We can go shopping for clothing later, and school supplies. The doctor wanted me to enroll you in a public school, even though you already mastered the courses. Social interaction would be good for you. I'm sorry about Veronica, she usually isn't this snotty." She shouted the last part, obviously aiming it to Veronica, who only turned up the music.

"Let's get you settled in, shall we?" she offered, raising a hand for me to take, a smile still on her face. The mask did not fall as I had originally thought it would when the fat man left, but I still felt unease. I moved a step towards her, and she smiled. We walked around the sofa, and entered the room I would be forced to share with a younger sister I hadn't known existed, with her already hating me for encroaching on her space. My mother entered the room, and turned off the music, ignoring the angered sound of protest. I stood at the doorway, watching.

A simple twin bed sat shoved in the corner of the room, a white pillow, and white blankets already folded neatly in the center. Every other part of the room was an explosion of color, necklaces draped over everything, posters of people and places, clothing strewn around. Veronica lounged on a queen sized bed with pink and purple comforters. As my mother and Veronica yelled at each other, I quietly made the bed I knew was going to be mine. Mattress cover, small thin blanket I couldn't remember the name of, comforter, white fuzzy blanket that was incredibly soft to the touch. Two white pillows in two white pillow cases I lent against the wall softly, the white calming then the crayon factory explosion on any other part of the room. The part of my room where my bed was had been stripped of posters, little holes where the thumbtacks one held the glossy papers.


End file.
